


a truth universally acknowledged

by thehandsingsweapon



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: "i told him all his friends sucked", "ok tell me where i lost u", M/M, Pride and Prejudice References, inspired by P&P text messages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 04:05:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19243489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehandsingsweapon/pseuds/thehandsingsweapon
Summary: TO: VICTOR NIKIFOROVFROM: LEE SEUNG-GIL> ok, fine. i’ll tell himTO: SEUNG-GILFROM: VICTOR> see! just tell him what you told me except only the nice parts and it’ll be fine probably> PS: you think he knows how yuuri’s doing?TO: VICTOR NIKIFOROVFROM: LEE SEUNG-GIL> uh> somehow we got into an argument about everyone he knows> and i told him yu-topia kind of sucksTO: SEUNG-GILFROM: VICTOR> …> ok tell me where i lost u“I love him, Seung-gil,” says Victor Nikiforov, who at 23 is:1. A multi-millionaire and four time épée champion;2. Finishing his victory lap in the English department, a degree which he’ll probably never use, since he’s the sole inheritor of his parents’ majority-stakeholder shares in Grand Prix, Inc;3. Hideously uninformed about the cold workings of the real world.





	a truth universally acknowledged

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dommific](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dommific/gifts).



> this is the first prompt from the [louciferish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/louciferish)-inspired [charitable donations prompt challenge, for dommi!](https://handsingsweapon.tumblr.com/post/185604519331/charitable-donations-prompts-exchange) we had a conversation a long time back about [these P&P texts.](https://www.sparknotes.com/blog/pride-and-prejudice-as-told-in-a-series-of-texts/) hence, here we are on the road to blitz-writing and complete silliness, featuring victor and yuuri as bingley and jane, and seungchuchu as darcy and lizzy. 
> 
>  
> 
> _“i told him all his friends sucked”_  
>  _“ok tell me where i lost u”_
> 
>  
> 
> title is in reference to jane austen's iconic first line: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

**ONE.**  
  


“You can’t possibly be serious,” says Seung-gil Lee the instant he steps out of his car at the roundabout under the rotunda at the Nikiforov family estate and hands the keys off to one of the household staff. Victor Nikiforov is waiting for him there, looking lovesick, a little pensive, and now, rather like Seung-gil has kicked his prize-winning poodle, Makkachin, who is responsible for at least four different Westminster trophies kept in a case full of other odds and ends in the formal dining room, all of them signals of the kind of Old Money hobbies that Victor’s family has been engaging in for at least a century.

“I love him, Seung-gil,” says Victor Nikiforov, who at 23 is:

  1. A multi-millionaire and four time épée champion;
  2. Finishing his victory lap in the English department, a degree which he’ll probably never use, since he’s the sole inheritor of his parents’ majority-stakeholder shares in Grand Prix, Inc;
  3. Hideously uninformed about the cold workings of the real world.



“You love his ass, maybe,” Seung-gil mutters. Even he’ll admit that Katsuki Yuuri is in possession of a very fine ass, which almost everyone they know has gotten to see in nearly its full glory thanks to _The Incident_ at that one frat party they’d been at celebrating the hockey team making it into the Frozen Four. At _The Incident_ , Yuuri had done a kegstand, demonstrating (at least to Victor) his very nice, _I’m The Captain And I Skate Center_  arms, and then he’d gotten very drunk, danced with Nikiforov all night, and challenged everyone in the room to a dance-off. Christophe Giacometti had insisted, in peak Christophe Giacometti fashion, that said challenge could only be met on the pole in the middle of the Haus. Seung-gil does not know how they managed to get a stripper pole, nor does he want to know, but he is absolutely certain that Christophe is to blame for it. It is the same certainty with which he knows that Victor Nikiforov should not be talking about marrying Katsuki Yuuri and raising fourteen poodles together, which was the exact text message that had convinced Seung-gil that this was an emergency and that he needed to drive over in the first place.

After all, it's only been a few weeks.

“Maybe I should try skating,” Victor muses in response, which is not at all what Seung-gil is hoping for, though Nikiforov would probably be great at it: Victor is great at every possible useless hobby he’s ever chosen to pursue. They’re walking a lap around the house now, habit more than anything else, the kind of thing they've done together for years. Nothing stands out in Seung-gil's memory so much as the time Victor had helped him out after the nasty business with Cao Bin: for that piece of aid he'll be in Victor's debt forever, circling the house, enduring his flights of fancy and endless appetite for surprise. “Did you know he took dance lessons for years? He says it makes him a better skater. Does the NHL even do trophy husbands? I think I’d do the job credibly.”

“Victor,” he says, finally, stopping his friend in his tracks. “Are you even dating him?” Because from where Seung-gil sits, Victor’s the one who’s lovestruck, following Yuuri everywhere, making every effort to get to know him. Yuuri, on the other hand, seems to shy away from affection.

“... You don’t have to be sleeping with someone to be dating them, Seung-gil,” Victor mutters. It’s A) the jealous clapback of a man who isn’t currently getting laid B) a shot that unexpectedly misses the mark. Seung-gil’s not dating anyone, though apparently Victor thinks he is, and Seung-gil’s brow furrows as he tries to imagine why that might be.

“Chulanont?” He finally asks, incredulous. Phichit Chulanont is, by sheer accident, Yuuri’s best friend; Yuuri’s parents host him at their shockingly kitsch spa and hotel, and while he’s a great lay his personality is about as diametrically opposed to Seung-gil’s as any personality can be. He’s also someone Seung-gil accidentally swiped right to, while attempting to delete the Tinder account his sister set up on his phone, and, well, if they’ve been hooking up for months now it’s just because it’s convenient and they’re both good at it, and that's absolutely the end of it.

“Trust me, Victor. Neither of us have any expectation that … _that_  is going anywhere.”

In the end, he convinces Victor to slow down a little bit, to play it safe. _You think you know him, but you probably don’t, at least not yet,_ he says, thinking of again of Cao Bin, the onetime family friend who'd nearly embezzled millions away from the Lees before Victor convinced the Nikiforov's eagle-eyed accountant to rescue their books. 

When the year finishes, Yuuri goes and proves him right: he enters the draft and gets shipped off to Vancouver, which is perhaps as far away from _here_ as one can possibly be.

When Phichit texts asking what Victor’s going to do while Yuuri’s away, Seung-gil responds with the shrug emoji and absolutely nothing else.

His work here is done.

 

~*~

 

**INTERMISSION ONE.**

 

 **TO:** CREAM  
**FROM:** PEACHES

> I was super convinced VN was going to U-Haul it into Yuuri’s bedroom in our shitty flat within like a month at the end of term and then never leave and I’ve been real real mad about it and then I realized that I betchu got the deets. wtf happened? #loveisdead

 **TO:** PEACHES  
**FROM:** CREAM

> Darling, I know! Do you know how good I look in spring wedding suits? Such a disappointment. Here’s the dirt: Seung-gil’s a fucking buzzkill and told V he was moving way too fast and that the Nikiforovs would never approve.

 **TO:** CREAM  
**FROM:** PEACHES

> WHAT.  
> I’m going to fucking end him, Christophe  
> slkdghwlkhewlkghs YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND I HAD HIS DICK IN MY MOUTH SIX DAYS AGO  
> THIS DISRESPECT

 **TO:** PEACHES  
**FROM:** CREAM

> Much as I’d like to watch you go get him, tiger  
> A) he’s back in Seoul  
> B) he might have a stick up his ass but he’s a good dude and he’s had Victor’s back since they were kids

 **TO:** CREAM  
**FROM:** PEACHES

> Nobody puts Yuuri in a corner.

 

 

~*~

 

 

**TWO.**

 

 **TO:** VICTOR NIKIFOROV  
**FROM:** LEE SEUNG-GIL

> ok, fine. i’ll tell him

 

 **TO:** SEUNG-GIL  
**FROM:** VICTOR

> see! just tell him what you told me except only the nice parts and it’ll be fine probably  
> PS: you think he knows how yuuri’s doing?

 

This is what happens: when Phichit gets a message from Seung-gil saying that he’s back in town and they should meet up, Phichit agrees, and when Seung-gil uncharacteristically suggests they meet up at city park, Phichit suggests, because he knows exactly the remote rotunda in which he can leave Seung-gil’s body when he’s done with it.

What he doesn’t expect is Seung-gil’s furious pacing and the way he wheels on one foot, suddenly, to level Phichit with that dark-eyed, broody stare that Phichit once (still) found charming ( _ASSHOLE_ , he repeats to himself, _HE’S AN ASSHOLE)_. “I like you,” Seung-gil says, with all of the enthusiasm and positive energy of a man undergoing a tooth extraction. “I know we’ve been doing the casual thing. But while I was gone, I … well, I missed this. And I probably shouldn’t, because you’re … You’re not someone anyone back home would even like, and your friends are all ridiculous and —“

“… The fuck?” Says Phichit. In the argument that ensues, Seung-gil somehow manages to remind him that the Katsuki family hotel is, and Phichit quotes, _horribly kitsch and only three stars on yelp,_  and that _it's obvious Yuuri never liked Victor in the first place._

“Listen, asswipe. Yuuri never even tells his real feelings to **me** ,” Phichit snarls, and in the pouring rain which he has somehow failed to account for, he dumps Seung-gil’s sorry ass right then and there and proceeds to stalk out into a monsoon-level storm. He stops on the threshold and spins back, squinting at Seung-gil, who has paled in a way that Phichit can no longer attribute to his habit of staying inside with entirely too many books. Phichit used to think that was _cute,_  he realizes, now; he used to think that Seung-gil was intelligent and handsome and worth his Friday evenings even if it was never going to go anywhere because Seung-gil was out of his league. Well. He’s wiser now. “You think I want to be with someone who’s ruined the happiness of my best friend? Hard fucking pass.”

 

 **TO:** VICTOR NIKIFOROV  
**FROM:** LEE SEUNG-GIL

> uh  
> somehow we got into an argument about everyone he knows  
> and i told him yu-topia kind of sucks

 

 **TO:** SEUNG-GIL

 **FROM:** VICTOR

> …  
> ok tell me where i lost u

 

 

~*~

 

 

**INTERMISSION TWO.**

 

 **TO:** phichit.chulanont@isu.edu

 **FROM:** seunggil.lee@isu.edu

 **SUBJECT:** an explanation

> _Phichit,_
> 
> _I thought it might be appropriate to offer an explanation of my behavior wrt: Victor and Yuuri. Though what I’ve done seems misguided to you, I can promise that I believed my actions were in the service of a friend …_

 

 

~*~

 

 

**THREE.**

 

“Yuuri,” says Victor Nikiforov, who is currently pacing across Seung-gil’s living room.

“Victor,” replies Seung-gil, who momentarily considers adopting the oblivious-deer-in-headlights look he's reasonably sure Katsuki might adopt before swiftly deciding it's not worth the effort. In front of him, Victor physically wilts.

“... This is a disaster!” _Tell me about it,_ thinks Seung-gil, as Victor turns around to try again. “Yuuri,” he says, a second time, devastatingly earnest, and his blue eyes do that puppy-dog thing that Seung-gil is immune to only because he’s one of the few who knew Victor Nikiforov when he was eight and awkward and wore braces before puberty and privilege gifted him one of the world’s best and biggest glow ups.

… Mostly immune to, that is, because he’s still sitting here, letting Victor Nikiforov, of all people, practice an apology that he keeps insisting has to be perfect. _As perfect as Yuuri is perfect._ Seung-gil’s eye twitches as Victor attempts a version that implies that he got bad advice from a very stupid friend, before he grits his teeth and reminds himself that he’s promised to make amends, and that once he’s done so he’ll forget Phichit and his incandescent, beautiful rage properly and move on with his life.

 _Nobody’s perfect,_ thinks Seung-gil.

 

 

~*~

 

 

**FOUR.**

 

 **TO:** VICTOR NIKIFOROV  
**FROM:** LEE SEUNG-GIL

> well?

 

 **TO:** SEUNG-GIL

 **FROM:** VICTOR

> I accidentally proposed  
> He said yes

 

 

~*~

 

 

**FIVE.**

 

“I want you to know that I still think you’re an asshole,” Phichit says, or half-slurs, rather, debauched and mostly undressed on the edge of Seung-gil’s bed at Yu-Topia. Every member of the wedding party has a courtesy room for the big event, and when he’s got some free time Seung-gil’s going to devote some time to raising their yelp rating because, as it turns out, Mr. Katsuki (father of the groom) has really good taste in liquor.

His head is spinning. It’s not just from the booze. Or from the wedding. Or from the mind-blowingly great handjob he's just exchanged with Phichit right past the door, right before their matching suit jackets, and shoes, and pants began to accumulate on the floor. 

...

Okay, so maybe it is that. Phichit's still talking, so Seung-gil tilts his head to study him; the way he knows, now, how the brightness of that smile can grow teeth and claws and turn into something positively feral. "Even if you got them back together," Phichit says. "And even if you did it for me.”

“I did do it for you,” says Seung-gil, but he tastes the lie in his mouth and doesn’t let it linger. “You and Victor,” he amends.

“Shut up, I’m not done.”

“… k,” says Seung-gil, somewhat muffled by the hand Phichit's clamped over his mouth. Feeling experimental and a little bit contrarian, he gives it a lick.

“What I was saying is you’re an asshole,” Phichit grouses. “But I guess you could be my asshole.”

“I’ll be your asshole anytime,” Seung-gil swears, solemnly.

When Phichit bends back down over him, filling up his frame of vision, he thinks:  _I'd be your asshole forever._

 

 

 

 


End file.
